World faces 800m job shortfall in 15 years: WB

World Bank Group President Ajay Banga warned on Friday that the world faces a shortfall of about 800 million jobs over the next 10 to 15 years.

He urged a shift in development finance that brings together public money, private investment, philanthropy and technology.

Addressing finance ministers and world leaders at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, Banga said 1.2 billion young people will enter the job market in that period. Projections show only about 400 million jobs will be available.

“A job is not a statistic. A job is dignity,” he said, adding that unrealised potential would have consequences across borders, as would opportunity.

Banga said the challenges the Bank faced when he took office have not eased. Conflicts persist, governments have less room to spend, debt burdens have risen, and the cost of essentials, from energy to fertiliser, remains high.

He said the Bank has been working on two challenges together: making scarce resources go further and helping countries create jobs on a large scale.

He said the future model should evolve as countries grow. Public and concessional finance, or funding on softer-than-market terms, will remain essential where needs and risks are greatest, while private investment and market access should play a larger role as economies strengthen.

“Success arrives when we are no longer needed,” he added.

On private capital, Banga said the Bank mobilised $112 billion last year, up from roughly $35 billion in FY22, the year before his workplan began.

Total financing, including the Bank’s own lending, exceeded $230 billion. Mobilisation nearly tripled in lower-middle-income countries, quadrupled in upper-middle-income countries and more than doubled across Africa, he said. Banga also announced that six multilateral development banks are creating common ways to assess, document, package and transfer investments. A project the Bank helps finance today could then be held by another investor, freeing its capital for new projects.

He said this could create an emerging-market development asset class, or investment category, so that “the size of our balance sheet no longer defines the scale of our ambition.”

“The jobs gap is a projection. It does not have to be our future,” he said.